It seems Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the Don Quixote twins of the digital age, have tilted at yet another legal windmill unsuccessfully.

So now, after losing another court challenge to overturn a previous court challenge, they’ll have to settle for $65 million.

Actually, $100 million, which is how much shares in Facebook have appreciated since the pair and also Divya Narendra settled with the social networking giant.

Said the ruling from the U.S. Circuit of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in part:

The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace. And the courts might have obliged, had the Winklevosses not settled their dispute and signed a release of all claims against Facebook. With the help of a team of lawyers and a financial advisor, they made a deal that appears quite favorable in light of recent market activity. For whatever reason, they now want to back out. Like the district court, we see no basis for allowing them to do so. At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached.

The end? Say it ain’t so! BoomTown, for one, will miss those big lugs.

Not so much Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, especially since the pair allege the tech wunderkind stole the idea for the start-up while a student at Harvard University.

After much legal mishegas, they got $20 million and 1.25 million shares at a price of $8.88 each.

And that’s more than enough, said court to the the Winklevii–it’s their eternal nickname in Silicon Valley now–and they can’t back out of a settlement they made in 2004.

As for the specifics, the three-judge panel struck down every Winklevoss argument:

- They said the terms of the Facebook deal introduced after mediation were typical.

- They said Winklevii should have been sophisticated enough to understand valuation.

- They said Winklevii couldn’t use the sealed mediation settlement documents to argue their case.

It’s true, but it’s also sad to see it all over, since all the litigiousness between Zuckerberg and the Olympic rowing brothers has been so dramatic that it was the subject of the almost Oscar-winning movie, “The Social Network.”

But maybe they can go to the Supreme Court! One can dream!

And with their latest loss and all the Google machinating against Facebook, who’s up for a sequel: “Geek Wars: The Empire and the Vii Strike Back.”

In a statement, Colin Stretch, deputy general counsel of Facebook said: “We appreciate the Ninth Circuit’s careful consideration of this case and are pleased the court has ruled in Facebook’s favor.”

Here’s the full ruling:

08-16745

Many years ago, before Google went public, I had an unusual late-night conversation in the lobby of the TED conference with its co-founder Larry Page about the prospect, about which–despite its inevitability–he had more than a little nervousness.

That would be: Taking the search company public.

After much ruminating, Page concluded that one of the more important reasons he felt compelled to have an IPO was to finally reward Google’s employees for all the work they had done to build the company.

While I have never had a similar chat with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the powerful social networking company and an initial public offering, I suspect that he would not express any such sentiment.

And it’s not because Zuckerberg does not value his staffers any less than Page did–instead, it’s because he seems to value his privacy most of all.

I know–ironic!–given how many perceive the company to be cavalier about important issues related to disclosures of personal information uploaded to Facebook by the mountain-load daily by its hundreds of millions of users.

That aside, Zuckerberg’s clear intent to keep the lid on Facebook tight–with no information about the details of financial performance and other pertinent information a public offering would require be disclosed–is clearly about to become a nettlesome issue for the company.

While that effort at preserving secrecy by staying private has resulted in little more than cute Silicon Valley media guessing games about a possible IPO, its most recent machinations are too clever by a half.

That would be the new and giant investment from Goldman Sachs, as well as a deal to get $1.5 billion of pre-IPO shares in the hands of the investment bank’s rich customers.

Aside from the appalling image that only the very wealthy can get an early shot at Facebook shares, which instantly became a press meme yesterday after the Goldman deal was announced, pretending this single investment entity–called a “special purpose vehicle”–simply feels like a Wall Street trick.

Plus, a special purpose vehicle sounds like a car that bankers use to take people for a ride.

Thus, a gaggle of rich doctors in New Jersey are treated like one blob, instead of what is plainly true to all. As the old Latin legal phrase goes: Res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself).

Of course, this strategic move is designed to keep the number of primary stockholders under 500, which is the IPO tipping point for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Therefore, by all means, let’s do it!

Or not, because I had an intense déjà vu about all this, and an unease that it felt vaguely familiar as a negative characteristic of Zuckerberg’s leadership that seems to cling to him.

That would be the dicey origins of Facebook, which remain a controversy to this day, including garnering an entire Hollywood movie on the subject.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Facebook’s history knows the basic question: Did Mark Zuckerberg “steal” the idea for Facebook from the Winklevoss twins, as well as sandbag their efforts, while they were all students at Harvard University?

And, more to the point, was it illegal?

The Winklevii certainly think so, continuing in their Don Quixote quest to take Zuckerberg down in a series of ever-more-comical lawsuits.

For me, the answer is a lot more complex–I think Zuckerberg most definitely screwed with the Olympic rowing twins and it was very creepy that he did.

But, in terms of breaking the law, not so much.

Of course, if you are endeavoring to always act with ethics in your career, this should not be the bar set. But in practical terms, it was most definitely an aggressive knee-capping that is not uncommon in business.

Zuckerberg has shown similar tendencies many times since then, especially around the thorny issues of privacy, where fast-and-loose behaviors are quickly followed by the I’m-sorry-I-didn’t-mean-it excuses.

Okay, fine, I get it. Business is war.

But, as it moves into a more mature place, the question now is whether Facebook should keep stressing this kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge propensity, because it feels–how can I say this in the nicest way–icky.

Plus it will surely attract unneeded attention from the SEC, which is already looking into the opaque market for trading shares of closely held companies and where Facebook is the star attraction.

And this is to say nothing of other issues–for example, could there be insider trading problems around the buying and selling of these private shares, as one person close to the situation has noted to me?

Facebook, of course, will defend what it is doing as above board, say it’s not unfair to give special access to its bounty to the very rich in what is essentially a private IPO and wag a finger at critics like me and tell us we don’t understand sophisticated financial issues.

But here’s what I grok without a Harvard Business School degree: It feels sneaky, it feels elite, it feels opaque, and this kind of fancy financing footwork could end in tears.

Because these legitimate questions on how Facebook handles its stock will continue to dog the company until–when he is good and ready (and finances at Facebook look prettier)–Zuckerberg eventually pulls the trigger on an IPO.

It would be nice, even if Wall Street applauds his cleverness, if he didn’t keep shooting himself in the foot along the way.

If we were an actual baby, AllThingsD.com would be just about to walk by now.

Hopefully, we have done better than that over the past year and we hope to do even more in the year ahead, attempting to give readers the very best tech news and analysis married with the high standards The Wall Street Journal is known for.

At the same time, we have also tried to capture the excitement and energy of the blogosphere, in what has been an entrepreneurial effort within a major media company.

The site officially launched on April 26, 2007, one year and two days ago.

No presents, but your presence over the next year, as we make even more improvements to our work-in-progress site.

Thanks, of course, go first to my amazing partner, Walt Mossberg, as well as our crack staff (click here to see them in all their glory), partners, designers and all the many Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones folks involved.

To mark the past year, BoomTown could spend a lot of time deeply ruminating on how blogging is so very different than mainstream journalism (much more fun, much less sleep).

Or I could ponder the agonizing quest to improve standards and accuracy in the blogosphere (“I am I, Don Quixote, the lord of La Mancha/Destroyer of evil am I/I will march to the sound of the trumpets of glory/Forever to conquer or die.”)

Or I could discuss widgets and how they have changed my life (I don’t know what I would have done had Scramble not inspired my empty soul!).

But, no!

Instead, I will just re-post here one of the very first posts I had up on that first day, about…drum roll, please…my worries about the situation at Yahoo (YHOO).

I don’t want to say I am a psychic or anything, but in this piece, called “Terry in Turnaround,” I begin my obsessive coverage of the Internet portal, which I thought a year ago could be headed for trouble.

(Interestingly, my other post that day was about Facebook trying to become more mature.)

Here it is:

To: Terry Semel
From: Kara Swisher
Re: Some unsolicited advice on being under fire as the Chairman and CEO of Yahoo! Inc.

Terry baby,

Has it actually been six years since I last shot you a memo offering some thoughts on getting the top-dog spot at Yahoo? Back then, I wanted to be among the first to congratulate you, as I wrote:

…on getting the green light on one of Silicon Valley’s most boffo projects. Or as we say here, on deploying a major multi-platform operating system with a simplified user interface and innovative support services using a world-wide network that focuses on standards-based security, manageability and reliability.

I hope by now you know what all that means and, if not, that you sound like you do. It’s hard to live in one of those tiny cubicles at Yahoo all this time (memories of that swanky Warner Bros. office you once luxuriated in must seem like a dream) without absorbing some of the jargon that techies like to throw around to make you feel stupid. (I know you still don’t know what SOAP is, nor should you.)

But it’s not your geek learning curve I am concerned with right now. It’s these persistent rumors that you might soon be ankling your way out of Yahoo’s HQ in Sunnyvale or even get the big heave-ho from Chief Yahoo (I will bet that even on his craziest day Ted Turner never asked you to call him Chief Yahoo) Jerry Yang and the board or perhaps a passel of irritated investors.

Ingrates! When you arrived at the company, it was gasping for air after the Internet bubble it rode to the top had popped. You cleaned up that place like your good pal Clint Eastwood might take out all the baddies in a troubled Western town, except without a lot of shooting. Your Hollywood reputation as a world-class schmoozer and soother was true–all sweetness and light, but investors loved it.

It was a good plot, but, I think we can agree, not enough for today’s fickle audience. Now, you seem to be box-office poison with a lackluster stock, disgruntled employees and questions about your vision. In other words, you appear to be in “turnaround” in that bad Hollywood way (meaning a film project that has been in development for ages so that it is not likely to see the light of day, let alone a theater). But let’s change the story and make it the kind of turnaround the whole family will enjoy.

First, the big surprise: Rethink your whole approach to search. You have certainly put a lot of powder behind this new online advertising system called “Panama” and have promised big results in upcoming quarters. Maybe it will deliver, but the fact of the matter is that it is likely you will be running behind search leader Google for the foreseeable future. It’s not that they have such much-bigger brains over there (they don’t, except for that one guy they hide in the back) or that the food is better (well, it is), but that Google (GOOG) is and always will be a technology company that dabbles in media. Yahoo is almost the exact opposite, starting out as a directory and not as a technology superstar. All this wrangling with Google in a nerd version of “Highlander” is only going to get you to the reality: “There can be only one!”

While some have been suggesting you get out of search, selling off Overture and doing a big money deal with Microsoft (MSFT) or even, yes, Google, to handle the algorithmic heavy-lifting, I think a better approach might be to spin off the search part of the company, perhaps combining it with a spin-off of Microsoft’s search assets. Thus, you create a separate company that could focus only on making Larry Page and Sergey Brin sweat a little bit. Put it in the hands of a real techie star (think the Brad Pitt of servers), and I will bet top engineers will find a tech-focused outfit more attractive to work for.

Most important, it will free you up to focus Yahoo on what it does best: Media and consumer products. While Google gets all the hip glory, the fact of the matter is your email is much better, as are your mobile doodads, as are all your news and entertainment offerings (pitting scrawny Google Finance next to Yahoo’s mighty site is a fine illustration of what you do best). And when I say media, I don’t mean you have to spend all your time creating stuff–in fact, you might consider throwing in the towel on your Santa Monica satellite–but that you could be the best friend Hollywood ever had. The news business, book publishing industry and most of Hollywood (from television to movies to music) is justifiably scared out of their wits by Google and only more so after the YouTube and DoubleClick acquisitions. It is true that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, which I think is a line in some Mel Gibson flick you helmed.

Speaking of acquisitions, go back and give that Mark Zuckerberg the love and $1 billion he wants. Facebook needs to hook up with a big player and fast, because despite its hypergrowth, its advertising ambitions are still hard to reach (even though a few ex-Yahoos are running the show in that department). They need help. Unlike the messy and looks-like-the-wheels-could-come-off-anytime MySpace, it is a really useful, well-made and sticky social network and seems to have a pretty defensible and young audience. As long as you keep things hopping, of course. Even us old folks are looking for a useful and relevant way to stay in touch, and Facebook can easily handle a lot of different communities, unlike many others where it’s hard to feel like you belong without a tattoo. I know it is a lot of money, but you know hiring a star is probably the best way to produce a hit, since a series of indie hits is not going to get you there.

Closely related is a more defined approach to marketing and rewarding customer loyalty. You can’t be a catchall anymore, as it is no longer a reach game. You must try to keep your best customers engaged. Let’s practice this one word: Relevance! What do I mean by that? I mean not turning into the soulless, ad-choked, spamfest that AOL became as it grew. Yahoo has to be relevant to each and every one of its users and that means letting them pick and choose any Yahoo product, even if it is not branded that way. Think Flickr (that was a terrific move) and you have the right idea.

Speaking of Flickr, I got this one off it. One personal aside: I love the loyalty, but can you possibly stop inviting Tom Cruise to Yahoo? It seems a bit goofy, and you’d be better off having some tech legend in from time to time.

There is a lot more to say, but let’s just end with the vision of your friend, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in the third “Terminator,” always kept to his task of protecting the leader of the resistance. Last time I wrote you, I advised you to use that old Hollywood technique of blaming the last studio boss if things went south after you arrived. Clearly, you can’t do that now, given your long tenure. So you have to stick to the course and say loudly you are doing that. After all, it’s not likely, even with the recent troubles, that the Yahoo board has the kind of guts it would take to oust you and there are no angry shareholders massing at the gates (and the last time I checked, even the obstreperous Carl Icahn couldn’t get rid of Dick Parsons at Time Warner).

And if you are going to go, then do it sooner rather than later. Unlike Burbank, Silicon Valley loves failure and even embraces it. In other words, even if you leave, you will eat lunch in this town again.

Tom Cruise/Terry Semel photo by Mitchell Aidelbaum.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.